Captain Underhill Unmasks the Murderer: The Legacy of Euriah Pillar and The Case of the Indian Flashlights Book

When I was - 11 or 13 or so, I think, around that - I got a hold of an omnibus edition of Doc Savage novels. Details are pretty blurred in the old Doug brainbox, but looking through Amazon, it was possibly volume 2. The only actual memory I have, besides a blurred impression of the cover, is that I enjoyed it. I remember being invested in it for awhile. I do not remember plots or characters. My primary book shopping avenues, at the time, were when the library sold off paperbacks and when we took a trip out to Brewton (AL) to visit the Good Will. Or the Walmart, also in Brewton (as well as on in Andalusia). I presumably got the first paperback from one of these places (I'm thinking Good Will), but I never spotted any more. I did see the movie, at least partially, but I did not invest into it in the way I invested in the books.

That Doc Savage book, and the hint of other stories in his line, took on something like a mythical quality to me. I would occasionally perk up when I heard the name. It was like an one-time imaginary friend that had been beloved, had stuck with me, and then had left and I was left only with vague memories. If you had asked me, I would told you the books were "quite good" and then be left with the problem of not being able to tell you why. "Because I was once 12(ish), and I read four of them, and they seemed ok," would have been the only honest response.

Once I found out that there were indeed reprints of the venerable series, I thought it would be good fun to get back into a series that had had such a strange impact on me, and ordered the first three volumes (note: I mean the first three from the Vintage Library repints*, which are not the first three in character or publication order). Now that I have started reading them, feelings are mixed. It's a little like some indie movie where a 30+ man goes through a second-coming-of-age story because he finally meets his {father | grandfather | high school buddy | childhood hero | new favorite manic pixie dream girl } and is largely underwhelmed, even maybe repulsed at first, but learns how to relax and love the situation over time.

This collection deals with the first "two parter" badguy seen in the series (and since pulps were kind of a new thing, surely one of the first recurring villains in literature, overall...I mean, Moriarty, the king of literary villains, is only directly in a single story), John Daylight, who dresses in striking single color outfits and seeks world dominance. This weird science Napoleon is pretty much like many other Doc Savage villains according to basic readings of the plots, but for whatever reason he tends to be treated as the villain.

First off, I give this first collection of two "novels" (more like pulp novellas, I think, but the magazine printing style gives a hard guess as to how many pages these would really be) four stars and I stick by that, but honestly these are largely 2 (or even, if you are a big meanie, 1)-star books if you go by the standard notches of the craft: the writing is mediocre with occasionally highlights, the dialogue is often poor, the characterizations are outsize or ludicrous and not always in a fun way, the grasp of world-politics and human issues is pitiful**, and the plot is largely a device of ebbs and flows to drive a story toward a particular page count. However, and this is something that more modern faux-pulps seem to miss, there is a certain innocence in these stories, a type of joy that is had in telling a tale about good guys and bad guys and dames and airships and hidden citadels and savage armies and world domination and weird science and fistfights and gunfights and truth serums and hypnotisms. It is delightful myth building, but unlike actual, real world myths that are often complicated and morally confusing and as much metaphors for psychological and scientific principles our forebears did not understand, these are much more of a lighthearted version of bloodshed and murder and monmania and despair. According to an unsourced quote on Wikipedia (as of January 2019), even Lester Dent, the man most responsible for writing them, considered them mostly "sellable crap". And yet, they are good and pure in their own way.

There are air fights and British hotels gun battles and New York concert halls and espionage agents and invisible ink messages and Arctic sanctuaries of weird, dangerous inventions and it is a time of voluntary madness. Timeless and so utterly rooted in their time. Wonderful and so...uninformed. Full of danger even though you know that Doc and his boys are going to pull through (and somewhat bloodlessly, as far as innocent lives are concerned). No wrong can they not fix. No spot of bother they cannot overcome. No life they cannot save. No matter how dark (and Lester Dent knows how to keep the stakes looking like they are impossible, James Wan could learn a thing or two about constant pacing of danger). I mean, there's an industrial chemist who goes by Monk, and Monk has a weird pig named Habeas Corpus, and his best-friend/worst-enemy is a lawyer nicknamed Ham, and Ham has a weird chimpanzee named Chemistry, and by gods did that make me giggle for a good three minutes at one point. This is what we are dealing with, folks.

By the time Daylight gives a speech about conquering the world under a single rule to bring about peace, you see in him the archetype of major comic book villains and James Bond villains and science fiction baddies...but maybe you also see a sly jab towards Hitler (who was starting to ramp up hostilities at the time this was being written). You very nearly can accept his philosophy, but you see it as wrong and as bad, and you delight the overthrow of it. The pulp has gotten you. Swing the fists in, old chap, and let's get home for supper.

Speaking of comic books, one of the best ways to read these now is to see them in the context of being progenitors of comic books and the various post-pulp entertainments that followed.*** In Doc Savage's larger-than-life-and-twice-as-innocent strength and reflexes and wit you can very much see a forerunner to Superman. Likewise, his many gadgets and gizmos lead one to seeing a proto-Batman. There is even a Fortress of Solitude (presumably, Superman's Fortress is a direct reference to Doc Savages, much like Batman's Arkham Asylum is a direct nod to Lovecraft). The crime fighting team of experts would go on to be copied any number of times. Likewise, this sort of "science group" of world-saviors leads to similar set-ups in Ultraman and other science fiction series. This is the genetic code. The birthplace of the 20th century's new mythology. No somewhat forgotten, considered outdated. But still containing their magic.

* As a warning: I placed a second order last week and have received no sort of confirmation nor does it look like the "number in stock" number has changed, before you order directly maybe let me confirm that they are still functioning as a store-site. I sincerely hope so.

** As Will Murray discusses in his informative afterword, Lester Dent seems to think Genghis Khan's name is the honorific and so has war leaders of a region somewhere past Afghanistan and near Tibet (which, really, could be a huge amount of land) called "Genghis" instead of "Khan". Likewise, the country he most associates with the burqa is India, which isn't wrong, per se (there are Muslims in India that wear burqas, though it wasn't exactly the standard mode of dress for women), but odd. While his discussion of London is better, it does feel like he avoided even the most basic research and just went for something like perceived wisdom on facts. Of course, racism and sexism abound. At least the larger-than-life masculinity tends to not be too terribly toxic.

*** See also The Shadow, Zorro, Lone Ranger, and the Scarlet Pimpernel (whose secret disguises and pretend dandyism very much sets up most "secret identity" comic book heroes).